-
An Even Dozen
Stunned Looking Back At This Week… I can say for certain that these twelve short stories would not exist without this challenge. Not a chance on the planet. And so far, Kris has said all of the first eleven work and are good, which surprises writer-me even more. Not supposed to happen that way in my head, which goes to show that even I still fight the old myths about writing at times. But this challenge, with my work schedule this week, has knocked some of those old myths into the bleachers, never to return. The Day Got up around eleven because I had an appointment for a conference call…
-
Eleven and Going Strong
I Am Going To Be Doing Packing Soon… I just need to have a day when I am not going from morning until night at work. But had fun today setting up webinar settings and making sure everything would work on my end. I think it’s going to be really cool. We shall see on Sunday. So we have a meeting format set up for Kris and the workshop and we have a webinar set up for the Sunday webinars. I want to thank Josh Frase a ton. He is my managing editor at Pulphouse and our web guy for all our web sites. He is a miracle worker, actually.…
-
Writing Can Be Stupid
Story Nine Done, But What A Pain… Today, without a doubt, might have been the busiest day I have had in a long, long time. And I expected it to be honest. After tomorrow, things calm down amazingly for me and I can actually get to more packing. But today was nonstop from the time I got up until the time I sat down to write. About 13 straight hours. So what do I do? Do I write a simple 2,000 word story and go to bed? Nope, 4,400 words later I have a Thunder Mountain story and it is way late for my new schedule. Now that’s just silly……
-
Eight In Eight Days
Still Going Along Strong… The next few days with all the workshop stuff will be an interesting challenge, then after that things smooth out and I will have time to get to not only more writing, but packing. Not much of that the last few days, other than I have managed to get stuff out of this house every day. That’s something. Onward. The Day Got up around 10:30 a.m. mostly not able to sleep any longer after only five hours. Couldn’t shut off the brain. Then I headed to WMG offices to work on Pulphouse. I did that until the writer’s lunch, which was great fun today. A bunch…
-
Story Seven and Moving
One Week, Seven Stories… Pretty happy to have gotten through the first hard area of this challenge. Between story #4 and #7 it feels like I had reached the first third of a novel. You know, everything is shit, what’s the point in going forward place we all hit. Difference in a professional writer and an early writer is professionals power through, early writers give up on the book. Well, I am a professional writer and I got through that part. So now the next few days will be a challenge with just a ton of stuff to do outside of writing. After that, I see smoother sailing I hope.…
-
Something New Tonight
Surprised Me… I got a decent night’s sleep, did a ton of work until almost 10:30 p.m. at WMG, came home, did some email, took a nap, felt great, ready to write, started the story at midnight and was done by 1 a.m. Go figure. The Day Got up around 11 a.m.. Then did a little email, packed some boxes, fed the feral cat outside who wanted to be toweled down (because it was raining) like Kris used to do to him. Yes, he is feral, but Kris talked him into letting her do that much if food was there. He usually runs from me, but he has figured out…
-
Day Four. Exhausted
Lack of Sleep… I was tired yesterday, but ended up only getting about five-and-a-half hours sleep because I needed to be out at the south stores very early to meet a collector who was selling us a large collection. So today I was really exhausted. But still got a story done anyway. The Day Got up around 8:30 a.m.. Then to the south Pop Culture Store and the North by Northwest Bookstore. When I pulled up the collector had unloaded a dozen large tubs of stuff and was waiting for me to tell him which store to take it to. I finally left there after sorting a bunch of it…
-
Day Three, Story Three
Pretty Tired, But Still Got To The Story… I tend to get tired on the third day of these challenges, not from the writing, but from the changing of the schedules around to still get everything done. And I got a car-load of stuff out of the house today as well. Not as much on the move as I wanted, but some. One bite at a time will eat this moving elephant, I hope. The Day Got going by around 11 a.m. once again. Then into the office for some stuff there, then off to do errands like mail and banking and such. Then I spent the afternoon and early…
-
Getting Ready To Start The Challenge
Doing All Sorts of Odds and Ends… Mostly I worked to clean up things I was behind on, such as email. And I did some resting as well. So the day was about the focus to get started writing short stories tomorrow. How do I get ready when I have no idea at all what story or stories I will be writing? I won’t even give any idea a thought until I sit down at my writing computer tomorrow. (Even if I did, my memory is so bad I would forget it by then anyway.) Well, I cleaned up my writing desk. That is sort of a signal to me…
-
Planning the Impossible
When It Comes to Production… …there are two sides in this modern world. Yesterday I was talking about what might be possible with writing production. But I sure don’t plan on ramping up to a major writing production cycle to have the books and stories sitting in a drawer. Nope, they have to be in Smith’s Monthly and published stand-alone and both those and that magazine takes some real production time and energy at WMG Publishing Inc. (Remember, I am still working at hitting 67 major titles published this year before the middle of November, and that does not count short stories stand alone.) So today I sat down with…